What Can We Learn From Betsy DeVos' School Visits? Explore Our Interactive Map
Updated.
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos often attracts a cloud of attention when she visits a school. At the very beginning of her tenure, she was met with protesters , angered by her support of policies like private school vouchers, who tried to bar her from entering a Washington, D.C., middle school. When she stopped at a Poway, Calif., school in May, her staff asked the district not to publicize the visit in advance, a decision that was later met with backlash online.
But she's also been greeted warmly by Native Alaskan children in remote schools, watched as students at an Indianapolis charter school designed T-shirt cannons as part of a project-based learning program, and read books with young students who probably didn't know anything about the controversy that tends to follow her.
When DeVos took office, Education Week set out to track every school visit she made. We recently did a massive update of our interactive visit tracker with dozens of new visits and accompanying photos, videos, social media, and related news coverage.
Click here to visit "Tracking School Visits by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos." You can also explore the map at the bottom of this post.
Here are three things to know about DeVos' school visits:
As education secretary, most of DeVos' visits have been to public schools.
DeVos has spent her life—and her tenure as secretary—advocating for school choice. While supporters contend that families—particularly low-income families—benefit from alternatives to traditional, district-run public schools, opponents argue those alternatives can divert money from the traditional public schools that most children attend. And, beyond more broadly accepted options like charter schools, DeVos has championed public programs to support private school choice. That includes her proposal for a $5 billion tax-credit scholarship program.
So it may surprise some DeVos detractors to see the patterns in her school visits. By our count, the secretary has visited 77 schools so far, and majority of those schools, 44, were district-operated CONTINUE READING: What Can We Learn From Betsy DeVos' School Visits? Explore Our Interactive Map - Politics K-12 - Education Week